


What's in an AU?

by yourlibrarian



Series: Fanfic Genres [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPF, Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 18:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6765271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My issue with the term "AU" is that it's used to mean what I consider to be vastly different things.  I find the term always has relevance in indicating that the story is somehow non-canon-compliant.  However, the ways in which this lack of compliance occurs may relate to settings, life histories, character development, or timeline changes.  And in some cases the term is used mostly to distinguish cloaked original fic from canon-inspired stories.  Moreover, the fandom in which the term is used may affect the definition in ways that are not the same across the board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in an AU?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted September 30, 2010

I was having a conversation with someone over the question of "is all fanfiction AU?" The answer to me seemed to obviously be "yes" in the sense that nearly all fanfic is going to deviate from canon in some way, if not now then by being Jossed in the future. There is certainly a good chunk of gen that fits neatly into open canon spaces, but I think the majority of fic indeed skews away from canon in either its premise or in the repercussions for events in the fic.

But my bigger issue is with the term "AU" in that it's used to mean what I consider to be vastly different things. I find the term always has relevance in indicating that the story is somehow non-canon-compliant. However, the ways in which this lack of compliance occurs may relate to settings, life histories, character development, or timeline changes. And in some cases the term is used mostly to distinguish cloaked original fic from canon-inspired stories. Moreover, the fandom in which the term is used may affect the definition in ways that are not the same across the board.

For starters, the sort of fic that gets written in the fandom and the laws of its Verse affect the meaningfulness of the "AU" term. "Alternate Universe" is often nothing of the kind. I'm going to discuss this issue by focusing on SPN and the Buffyverse because these are the fandoms whose fic I'm familiar with. Other fandoms fall into different spots on the "look out your window" to "fantastical" polarities, but some of the discussion should still apply.

To begin with, I most often see the issue of life histories and settings conflated when the term AU is used. For example, in SPN RPS, "AU" is used to indicate the use of Jared, Jensen and other actor personas in settings completely unlike that of their actual lives and known life history. One may quibble as to what is considered "canon" or not when one is talking about living (or dead) individuals, but there is certainly plenty of factual information that is commonly known from the official biographies, performance histories, event appearances, and communications of those individuals, or people who have established connections to them.

In Buffy fandom, whose RPS is minimal compared to SPN, AU stories also give the characters completely different life histories. Many of these fics are classified as "human AU," meaning that supernatural characters are and always have been human. However, the point of both the SPN RPS and Buffyverse human AU stories is to explore alternate _lives_. These are generally contemporary stories set in the characters' country of origin in which the characters may be younger or older than their current ages, or their current age gap between one another. The characters are generally recognizable in some fashion with similar personas, although these are sometimes broadly sketched. 

However, there is then also the issue of AU stories which use fantastical or futuristic locations for the characters and in which _settings_ are either the principal change, or an additional change to the canonical characters/universe. These could more accurately be called an AU given that it may literally be a universal change. Yet there are also AUs which use historical settings or alternate countries of origin in which the setting is also the crux of the story, but they could have taken place within our known world. These might be more fittingly characterized as an AS, or alternate setting.

What continues to make the AU term confusing is the fact that something being futuristic, fantastical, or hugely different in time may be non-compliant with canon only depending on the Verse. For example, in SPN RPS, these would all be major deviations from known "canon." But in the Buffyverse, these could potentially be canonical stories. For example, long lived vampires could easily have canon-compatible stories stretching into the past or future, or taking place in alternate fantastical universes. What's more, in the Buffyverse there are characters who could shift themselves or other characters to such settings and sometimes have within the canon. This is equally true in SPN since the introduction of angels and the mention by individuals such as Gabriel or Death of alternate universes. FPF in SPN tends to have very little AU written in it. Rather, what is more commonly seen is that hell, post-apocalyptic earth, and now heaven, have been treated in some ways as alternate universes where vastly different laws and conditions exist that make setting a key factor in the story. However, given that all these settings have a canonical existence, these stories are not really AU so much as AT, or alternate timelines. 

In both the Buffyverse and SPN we already have canonical stories which deal with either alternate universes or alternate timelines. In Buffy, the episode "Normal Again" posits the entire Buffyverse as the hallucination of Buffy Summers, institutionalized mental patient. The Buffyverse would then be an AU. However, there are more examples of an AT in both Buffy and Angel which fans have dubbed the Wishverse or Birthdayverse, and which in SPN we could call the Mystery Spot-verse. In each of these verses' drastic changes are seen as the result of one or more key events occurring or not occurring. In some ways we may also see that the "canon" timeline is itself no longer the original timeline due to major changes. For example in Buffy, the fact that Dawn exists and that everyone in the verse remembers an alternate history with her in it means that the audience no longer knows what the characters believe are canon events. This would also be true for many characters in Angel, who do not remember what the audience knows about Connor. In SPN, we could also say that Dean's deal effectively changed the timeline by restoring Sam to life and resulting in his own death. In Buffy, it is implied in S7 that cosmic changes occurred because Willow did the same for Buffy in S6. 

All of this is to say that what actually constitutes the "canon" timeline is a fragile thing in texts which are already based on the fantastic. So the "AU"ness of a timeline change is more meaningful in some texts than others. White Collar, for example, would experience a change on the order of an Alternate Universe if everyone suddenly had memories of a previously non-existent character, or if someone dead for more than 24 hours was suddenly restored to life. But for SPN or the Buffyverse, this falls more under the "timeline tampering" rubric.

Timeline tampering can be extensive or minute and I distinguish this from "life history" changes in that timeline changes can only be called that if we are talking about a known timeline to start with. So Buffy and Xander growing up in England as the children of U.S. diplomats posits a life history change, since not only they but their families would have to be leading substantially different lives for them to meet under those circumstances (particularly if Buffy actually had a younger sister named Dawn). However a timeline change might have had Cordelia leaving Sunnydale earlier so that she and Xander never dated and she never went to L.A., or Sam never went to college or Dean continued to date Cassie through S1.

Character development is where I would classify most fanfic as being non-canon compliant and where the term AU really doesn't apply. In many cases, one person's OOC is another person's "exactly how I see him/her." This is often just a matter of perspective. For example, the bitterest division between slashers and anti-slashers (not to be confused with non-slashers), is the complaint that "X would never do that." This is generally a foolish prognostication to make, particularly early in a text's canon. There were certainly plenty of people surprised to discover Willow really was into girls, and that John Winchester did indeed have (at least) one other child. 

However, while the vagaries of canon timelines and the ever changing roster of writers interpreting those characters can lead to some pretty contradictory characterization, there are certainly some things which are established details about a character. It is when writers choose to deliberately ignore or change these factors that we can say that it's an AC, or alternate characterization. So, we might have an author verse where Dean has been mute since childhood or where Giles never recovered his sight after Something Blue. One can see how an AC might also turn into an AT (alternate timeline) but it's also perfectly possible that timelines remained largely the same, only with these individual characteristics altered. (This is particularly possible in short stories that focus mainly on the character and not overall story arcs). While you could have stories that are both, I think the AC would stand out by focusing on a specific change in a particular character rather than a larger change in the verse as a whole.

So you might have a Dean who was diabetic and thus could not indulge in pie all the time, or a Tara who was allergic to cats but did not stutter. More profoundly, you could have a Dean who began to question John Winchester much earlier in his life, and a Sam who began to connect with him, or a Willow who became too alarmed by her magic experiments to develop her powers to the extent that she did in canon. As with the timeline issue, the longer canon has gone on, the more likely things aren't all that AC as the characters tend to go through sufficient changes that more interpretations seem possible and less deliberately alternative.

To reiterate, rather than the blanket term "AU", I think we also need alternate life (AL), alternate setting (AS), alternate timeline (AT), and alternate characterization (AC) if we really want to be on the same page in discussing how fanfic deviates from canon, and when it has nothing to do with canon at all. It's also useful if we want to look at how differently fans can explore different canons.

For example, if I look at SPN and Buffyverse fic, I tend to see these sorts of patterns:

SPN/RPF – Some AU, more AS, lots of AL, very little AT, AC hard to define.  
SPN/FPF – Very little AU, AS or AL, some AC, lots of AT.

Buffyverse/RPF – Some AL, very little AU, AS, AT, AC hard to define.  
Buffyverse/FPF - Lots of AL, some AS, AU, AT, less AC.

Speculating why these differences exist (or if they exist since, like everyone else, I can't see examples of everything) is a subject for another (or someone else's) post. I did want to finish by mentioning how specifying these canon changes can reveal "cloaked original fic." 

In general, most fanfic tends to take on one or two of these changes but not all of them at once. So, you might have Buffy and Spike in space but it may simply be futurefic where they have both lived to a point where life in space occurs. Or you might have Dean and Sam in the old west, but they are there thanks to Castiel's time travel mojo and they're on a mission to find out how to replicate Ruby's knife. If, however, you have characters whose lives have always been different, where the characters also seem to have little in common with the canon characters, their universe seems to operate by different laws, and you are in a different setting? That's not an AU at all (though it may be a good story) and we can probably stop calling it that.


End file.
